Today

Today I got up early since I stayed home last night. I still was up until two o’clock in the morning to edit a shoot I did Monday/Tuesday and to write the blog. But I am usually fine with six hours of sleep. I got up at 8 AM to finish the edit and to start to process the 330 final images on my computer.

I ran out around 11:15 AM to make it to the 12 o’clock kung-fu class. Sure enough I hurt my left index finger. I am still typing with two fingers but I am also in pain doing so. After class I rushed over to the gym. My work out buddy Tony showed up half an hour late but this is already an improvement since the last two Saturdays he said he would meet me but never showed up. Because Tony was out drinking last night his motivation to pump iron was very limited. I looked at him and said, “Tony what did you drink?” Whiskey, too much whiskey is all he said. At 2:30 I had to go I wanted to meet Alon.

I met Alon on Monday on I shoot I did with him for his new album that will be released by Obliqsound in a couple of months. We went to the Bosendorfer showroom the maker of one of the world’s finest pianos. We were able to use a beautiful blue piano that has a $ 250,000.00 price tag on it. Who cares about the price, I could not play that thing anyway. Well, that is different for Alon. It was amazing to hear him play. I sometimes wish I had learned to play an instrument. I wonder what would have happened if my parents would have bought me a guitar instead of pushing an accordion on me just because we had one lying around at home. I might be in a rock band right now and touring world. But why contemplate the past? I am very happy doing photography.

It is always great to see when somebody is really good at something. A musician for example who becomes one with his instrument, one with his music. Alon is one of them. We did a second part of the shoot on Tuesday. By coincidence I had a gutted piano in my hallway that I used as a background for what turned out to be a great shoot as well.

Alon is from Israel. During the shoot he told me how he makes his own humus. Since I am vegetarian humus is something I have all the time. I was very interested in how you can make it yourself. On the other hand preparing food is something I am not so much into because the whole process takes too much time and the time I have is so limited. But it came even better. He invited me over to his house to try his homemade humus.

I also wanted to use this opportunity to give him the files from the shoot. After the gym I went home just to find out that Photoshop had crashed and only 20 of the 330 files were processed. But were there is a problem there is also a solution. I uploaded the files to my laptop and ran to the train.

Alon was so nice to pick me up from the train station and brought me over to his house were I met his lovely wife Julie and Jonathan. Jonathan really rocks. He speaks two and understands three languages pretty well, is a puzzle master, has his own car and all that at the tender age of almost two.

It is always amazing to watch children. There is this innocence, happiness and joy. All they want to do is to play and have fun. They are our teachers. That is what the famous saying “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” means. The kingdom of heaven is nothing else then joy and happiness.

We took a short trip up to their rooftop where I shot today’s blog image. I had a wonderful time. You spent the afternoon surrounded by great people eating what turned out to be the best humus I ever had. What else is there to life?

After I had processed the files on my laptop and moved them to Alon’s hard drive I made my way back home to do what I have been doing every day since the beginning of this year. Writing my blog.

 

"Today" Park Slope/Brooklyn 03-01-08 at 05:44 PM.

 

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